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Tag: Kiran Desai

  • The Inheritance of Loss

    I got tagged by a dear StumbleUpon friend, shpongolina. Usually I don’t participate in this type of things, but because it offers something interesting and it comes from a great person, I’ll make an exception. 😉

    The rules are as follows:

    1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
    2. Open the book to page 123.
    3. Find the fifth sentence.
    4. Post the next three sentences.
    5. Post a comment and then tag five more people.

    The Inheritance of Loss

    by Kiran Desai

    Gyan was twenty and Sai sixteen, and at the beginning they had not paid very much attention to the events on the hillside, the new posters in the market referring to old discontents, the slogans scratched and painted on the side of government offices and shops. “We are stateless,” they read. “It is better to die than live as slaves,” “We are constitutionally tortured. Return our land from Bengal.”

    I wrote about this book a while ago. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m still reading it. Worse yet, I’m not even halfway through, even though it’s a great book. My excuse is that I’m an expat in Istanbul and there’s just so much to see and do here. 😉

    I love this book, because it talks about life in India at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the north-eastern Himalayas around the time of the Nepalese independence movement in the mid-80s. This is something I knew nothing about in terms of facts, let alone in terms of experience. That’s the awesome thing about books; they let you experience something like you’re there. It’s the power of writing. It’s a very moving story and has many elements in it. Classes/castes, love, freedom, happiness, travel, work, study, war, conflict, poverty – many things which I either have never been in contact with, or that I have always taken for granted.

    You can read more about the author, Kiran Desai, on Wikipedia. Check out the book, including reviews, at Amazon.

    I would like to tag Dori (From A Yellow House In England), Chris (Beyond Taiwan), PJA64X, Emm (Emm in London) and lala (Coastal Commentaries).

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  • Reading!

    Since I spend a lot of time on public transport (either traveling or in the crazy traffic of Istanbul), I get to do quite a bit of reading. At the moment I’m reading two books. “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle, this one I’m reading for the second time, and “The Inheritance of Loss” by Kiran Desai. I found two inspirational quotes in these books that I want to share.

    Something I find very worrying is the growing phenomenom of antitheism. While using StumbleUpon, I noticed an immense number of sites that are very hateful towards religion. Understandably so, because they feel their way of life is being threatened by religion, but personally, I don’t feel that bashing, mocking, fighting or anything else that comes out of negativity can do any good. In “A New Earth“, Eckhart Tolle expresses my feelings very clearly:

    “In certain cases, you may need to protect yourself or someone else from being harmed by another, but beware of making it your mission to “eradicate evil,” as you are likely to turn into the very thing you are fighting against. Fighthing unconsciousness will draw you into unconsciousness yourself. Unconsciousness, dysfunctional egoic behavior, can never be defeated by attacking it. Even if you defeat your opponent, the unconsciousness will simply have moved into you, or the opponent reappears in a new disguise. Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.“

    Very wise words. I really admire Eckhart Tolle’s works and can keep reading it over and over. If you really want to grasp the full meaning of his words above, go check out the book.

    A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai

    On my way to Bulgaria, I figured that Eckhart Tolle’s stuff might be a bit heavy for a 10+ hour journey and I’d need some novel to read. I found some novels in my apartment (left by previous inhabitants) and found an interesting one about life in Nepal around the time of the Nepalese independence movement in the 80s. I picked it up and took it with me… On the third page or so, I came across this marble of beauty:

    “Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.” 

    Taken from Kiran Desai’s “The Inheritance of Loss“. Haven’t quite formed my opinion about it, since the print in my version of the book is quite small and it wasn’t ideal to read in a bus on a Bulgarian bumpy road (and at night), so I had to put it away.

    Have you read any of these books? Thoughts and comments very welcome! I find books are one of the best topics for meaningful and engaging conversations! 🙂

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